Author: Dariana

During Week 1 of my internship with BridgeYear my bosses made something clear – while our professional work was important to them, so was our personal development. To demonstrate their investment in us as individuals, they set up weekly coaching sessions. For 30 minutes each week, each intern gets to meet with our assigned coach to talk about areas of growth that we have chosen with their help. These sessions have become essential to my BridgeYear experience and development as a leader.

My role this summer involves leading a team of people I’ve come to call friends and reporting to bosses I’ve called mentors for years. In other words, I’m caught in the middle of relationships with multiple dynamics. Although this situation creates an ideal working atmosphere on most days due to our strong bonds, it can also be hard to juggle when we have to get down to business. I worried about this from the start – how can I voice my opinions when we’re not on the same page, confront serious topics and deliver big asks, all while maintaining mentorships and friendships? I expressed this worry to my coach during our very first 1:1. It’s been about 7 weeks since then, and in that time, the situations I first worried about became a reality.

While the moments leading up to difficult conversations with my team were nerve-wracking, they weren’t as bad as I had imagined. This is because I worked on establishing a culture of trust and openness with the advisors I was leading from the start. I was readily available when they needed me, I listened to their concerns inside and outside of BridgeYear, and constantly reinforced that my priority was doing what was best for our students. Going back to the talk I had with my coach, I remembered that if my team trusted me and understood that I had the right intentions, then they would be willing to listen when it was time to get serious. I think this is exactly what happened. My team listened and acted when I expressed concerns about us not meeting goals or tracking student progress, etc. They were receptive to my feedback and none of it damaged our friendships because mutual respect had been established.

Just as things had to get real with advisors, the same happened with my bosses. In another one of my coaching sessions I was told that in my position I had to be an “advocate.” My coach explained that I had to communicate my team’s needs to them (the co-founders) in order for all of the team to be on the same page. It was another responsibility that took some owning up to because I had to manage up and communicate the not so pleasant things.

I got my chance when I realized that as BridgeYear was expanding, the focus on advising was getting lost in transition. With potential partners being attracted to our Career Test Drives (CTDs) the most, our time was mostly spent on CTD-related tasks and, in comparison, little time was being invested in advising. This was worrisome. I wanted us all to be 100% for students, but we felt that our CTD projects were more pressing. When I decided that this couldn’t go on for longer I sat down with one of the co-founders and told her that this had to change. Together, we brainstormed ways to get everyone to restructure priorities by tag-teaming during an all-team meeting in which advising took the spotlight. This was a wake-up call for advisors and since then, the team has done well at prioritizing.

I bring these situations up because in the process I’ve gotten to develop new skills and learn about myself in the workplace. I’ve learned that, though not always easy, it is possible to find a balance between friendship and professionalism. I’ve become better at listening and adapting to other’s needs. I’ve practiced managing up to my bosses, though I’d say not enough, but even that’s part of my growth. The lessons I’ve learned during my time with BridgeYear will surely resurface at Brandeis and beyond.

Dariana Resendez ‘19

My internship with BridgeYear is officially halfway over. As we find ourselves in the middle of a very busy July, we’re thinking about our current students and projects, but also about the future of the organization. It’s a daunting task, and while the co-founders are the ones doing the majority of the thinking ahead, us interns get to pitch in.

To rephrase, BridgeYear is the on-ramp to educational pathways and employment opportunities for individuals in low-income communities. We do this by designing Career Test Drives (CTDs) to increase career awareness and providing near-peer advising to support the crucial postsecondary transition to community college. It’s important to mention that due to the startup nature of the nonprofit, things are constantly changing. While our goal has always been to provide support to students who plan to enroll in community college, the how I mentioned above was not set in stone from the start.

Last summer, change to us came in the form of increased matriculation rates with our how being advising provided by college students. If we could successfully guide students through the enrollment process and get them to the first day of their fall semester, then we had some impact in defeating summer melt. As it turns out, with BridgeYear advising, 59% of recent high school graduates who participated in the 2016 pilot enrolled in community college (compared to the local rate of 30%). This meant that the program nearly doubled enrollment rates and the organization was heading in the right direction.

While this was all great news that told us we had the advising portion down, something was still missing. After advising and interviewing community college students over three months, BridgeYear realized that career clarity was a missing aspect of purposeful college enrollment, and in came CTDs. The idea behind CTDs was to get students to go to college not just because it was what was expected of them, but because they had strong reasons and future plans.

The first of the CTDs was Pharmacy Technician. Students got to pretend to be pharm techs in a fifteen minute simulation in which they filled prescription orders for patients. In that time, students learned hands-on about job responsibilities and the skills necessary to be successful on the job. Whether they loved the job or hated it, the good news was that they gained exposure. After that CTD was a hit, two more came into the picture: Medical Laboratory Technologist and Medical Coding Specialist. Today, thanks to CTDs, 91% of participants have become more aware of the daily tasks of new careers.

The process that comes before changes, in places like our how, takes many forms. Sometimes the process is countless hours of brainstorming on a whiteboard or giant post-it notes. Sometimes it’s talking to mentors and coaches who can share their expertise and help us better our strategies. Oftentimes it’s talking to the students themselves. At the end of the day, the ideas that seem small when thrown around our collaboration table are what allow us to continue innovating day in and day out.

The change itself comes in a multitude of ways too. Students enrolling in college at higher rates like previously mentioned is one way. Helping them gain career exposure is another. There’s days when change to me is students asking for my help without me having to nudge them. It’s all a part of the big picture.

As I wait for the next half of the summer to unfold, I will continue to contribute my part by leading the Advising Team to ensure that our students enroll into college and that lack of guidance isn’t a problem. The advising portion is still essential to our mission and is a responsibility I take to heart. Even if my role seems small on a weekday afternoon, I hope it will be bigger than I anticipate in the long run.

Dariana Resendez ’19

On June 30th, 2016, a manila envelope arrived at the BridgeYear Headquarters (aka a townhouse living room set up to look like an office). Inside were a couple of pieces of paper that the BridgeYear team had so anxiously been waiting for. The first sentence read:

“Dear Applicant,

We are pleased to inform you that upon review of your application for tax exempt status we have determined that you are exempt from Federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of the International Revenue Code.”

At first glance, this may seem like an odd sentence to get excited about, but for a team of ten that had been working for a month to build something from nothing, it was the kind of confirmation we needed. We had been approved for 501(c)(3) status, meaning we were officially operating under nonprofit status!

It’s been a year since that day, which means BridgeYear is officially one! Last Friday, on the organization’s birthday, the team celebrated with some cake and a photoshoot. As I stood there and watched my coworkers laugh hysterically at our co-founders standing behind the camera yelling things like “Give me more sass!” and “Yes, that’s perfect!” I couldn’t help but reflect on the last year. So much has changed about the organization, and in the process, a lot has changed about me too. After my first summer of interning, I realized that education was the field I saw myself in the most. While I didn’t come to that conclusion then and there, subconsciously, I built my class schedule around topics that I believed would best prepare me to serve in this sector.

Upon my return to Brandeis for the fall 2016 semester, I took a course called Latinos in the US with Professor Madeleine López. There, I learned about the generations of Latinos before me whose efforts to attain social justice in education are the reason I get to attend a school like Brandeis today. Professor López taught me to analyze history in a way that I hadn’t been taught to before – she showed me that the inequalities experienced by Latinxs in our education system today are rooted in the history of this country. With her words always in mind, I’ve been able to trace back the reasons for the low rates at which Latinxs enroll in and graduate from higher education. When a whole population experiences de facto segregation and is denied of resources for decades, the systems in place are anything but fair. I think about this a lot as nearly 78% of BridgeYear students today are Latinxs from low-income communities. It makes the reasons behind my work in college access and success 100 times stronger on a good day, and 1000 times more powerful on the tougher days.

While my class with Professor López gave background to my work, Spring 2017 brought with it a massive amount of knowledge through the class Critical Perspectives in Urban Education. It was one thing to learn about segregation before Brown v. Board of Education in 1964, and it was another to talk about its existence in 2017. Professor Derron Wallace taught me to recognize the evolving forms of racial, economic, and social exclusion that place students in urban areas at a disadvantage. With BridgeYear I get to go around the city and into high schools where resources are scarce and out of reach for those who could benefit from them the most. Because of Professor Wallace, I’m able to better understand the complexity of issues affecting local public schools and then critically think about how I’d like to tackle them in the future.

Writing this reminds me of how lucky I really am. I’m able to work hands on in something I’m passionate about. I get to turn theory from my classes into practice at work and the scholar inside of me cannot get over how magnificent this feels. With six weeks left of the internship, I’m eager to see more of my Brandeisian lessons appear in my day to day work.

Dariana Resendez, ’19